A grandmother said she woke up with an Italian accent after initially losing her speech for three months. Althia Bryden, 58, a medically retired customer service advisor from London, suffered a stroke on May 4, which left her unable to speak or feel the upper right side of her body.
After further medical examination, doctors identified a carotid web in her neck as the cause of her stroke and performed surgery to remove it in August. Following the operation, Althia regained her ability to speak but, despite never having spoken Italian or visited Italy, she found herself speaking with a distinct Italian accent – even unconsciously slipping Italian words and phrases such as “mamma mia”, “bambino” and “si” into conversation.
Althia’s speech and language therapist suggested she may have foreign accent syndrome, a rare condition where a person’s speech takes on an accent different from their usual one, often typically resulting from brain damage like a stroke. While Althia awaits a formal diagnosis, she admits that although she’s grateful to have survived the stroke and regained her speech, she feels like she’s lost her identity, waking up each day hoping her accent will return to normal.
Althia told PA Real Life: “Even my laugh is not the same… I’m not me, it’s like someone is impersonating me. I feel like a clown with an upside-down smile that people are watching perform. They are laughing, but I still have an upside-down smile. It’s very sad – everything is different, even my body language is different. People aren’t meeting the original me, I don’t know who I am.”
Recalling the terrifying morning of May 4, her partner Winston discovered her unresponsive with a visibly drooping face, and promptly called an ambulance. Althia’s situation worsened at the hospital, and she lost speech and sensation on her right side.
She said: The only thing I could do was point. Doctors gave me a notepad, then I realised I couldn’t write because I’m right-handed and if someone wrote something down, I could not read it.
“My brain couldn’t understand it – it was very frightening for me and I felt afraid and confused. I felt like a shell of the person I once was. I was so alone and isolated, and I remember feeling just totally lost.”
After spending nine days in hospital, she was discharged on May 13, before being readmitted to hospital on July 30, for surgery which took place on August 1. She spent two days in intensive care due to her “very erratic” blood pressure.
Afterwards, Althia sai a nurse woke her up to take her blood pressure and, without thinking, Althia responded. “Completely out of the blue, I just started speaking,” Althia recalled.
“She looked as shocked as I did! I remember thinking, ‘Who is that talking? ‘ Firstly, I couldn’t believe it was me talking, but I also didn’t recognise the sound of my voice. The nurse rushed to get colleagues round to my bed. No one could believe I was talking after so long.
“But the more I spoke, the more confused we all became. They asked me if I had an Italian accent before my stroke and were telling me I had a strong accent. In the whirlwind of it all, I was so confused.”
As the days went on, she said her Italian accent remained, and she felt like she had “no control” over the sounds she was making. Althia’s son found the situation amusing, at times having to leave the room to regain his composure.
Althia even hears the accent in her thoughts and sometimes uses Italian phrases unintentionally, despite never learning the language or visiting Italy. Recalling an incident with her brother-in-law, she said, “The first time I did it, I was talking to my brother-in-law, and I said ‘si’ as he was talking. It’s such a strange feeling. I’m so surprised when it happens; my eyes widen in shock.”
She still receives help from a speech and language therapist, as she finds it hard to avoid stuttering outside the flow of conversation. Neither her therapists nor doctors can predict if her original accent will return.
Juliet Bouverie OBE, chief executive of the Stroke Association, said: “Every day in the UK over 240 people wake up to the catastrophic impact of a stroke, which can leave survivors unable to move, see, speak, or even swallow. It’s a traumatic, life-changing event that robs survivors and their families of the life they knew.
“Recovery for a stroke survivor is a hard slog of gruelling and repetitive therapy. But with strength, determination and the right support, recovery is possible. We support stroke survivors and their families to find the strength they need to find their way back to life.”
For more information about communication problems after stroke and how to find support, visit www.stroke.org.uk or contact the Stroke Support Helpline on 0303 3033 100.